The ACC is making an earnest effort at improving its status in the predatory food-chain world of major college athletics, and in some respects yesterday's news of the conference's new TV deal with ESPN was impressive.
When each school learns it's going to get $4 million more per year as a result of this new long-term agreement, it's a plus. That's 33 percent more than the per-school TV money secured in the previous deal just two years ago.
Consider that, before ESPN outbid Fox Sports for the ACC's TV rights in the spring of 2010, the conference's media deals brought in $72 million per year. That's $6 million per school.
I'm no mathematician or economist, but I feel safe in saying an increase of $11 million per school over two years is a pretty nice bump for ACC athletics departments. And given the conference's glaring inability to produce an elite football presence over the last decade, the new deal might be considered a miracle.
Everything is relative, though -- now more than ever. The ACC has upgraded from a Geo to a Honda to a Lexus over the last two years, but its next-door neighbor has a slick BMW. And the dude across the street has a Mercedes. And the other next-door neighbor has a Porsche.
The ACC has a nice, stylish ride compared to its previously owned vehicles, but it's not as stylish or nice as those driven by the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12. Does the 10th commandment include "TV deals" among neighbors' possessions that shall not be coveted?
The case was made yesterday in this column that it's time for the ACC to fully commit itself to football instead of clinging to its traditional belief that basketball is the big fish. Football brings in four times the revenue that basketball does, and so it logically follows that the ACC should give some favor and preference to its football powers after giving favor and preference to its basketball powers all these years.
Speaking of basketball, it's no small development that the ACC has consented to naming rights for the ACC Tournament. If that's not a sign of the times, not sure what is. Because the conference long considered its crown jewel above such commercialism, similar to the Masters or Kentucky Derby. Allowing title sponsorship is the equivalent of a dude taking his old CD player to the pawn shop.
Some Thursday linkage:
-- USA Today on the ACC's TV deal.
-- ACC purist Barry Jacobs weighs in.
But as the league’s basketball prowess waned around the turn of this century, coaches lobbied loudly for more exposure to promote their product. League leaders responded by adding a Fox television sports package on Sunday nights starting with the 2001-02 men’s season.
The expanded schedule spurred protest over intrusion on family and church time in what remained a Southern-based league, but to little avail. Later coaches voiced more pragmatic concerns about starting contests as late as 8 PM on Sundays, essentially depriving players of precious time to study and socialize. In response, Sunday games now begin no later than 6 PM, a practice the new deal will continue.
The reconfigured contract takes schedule creep yet a step farther, however. This time the change involves football, a sport supposedly worth at least four times as much as basketball as a TV commodity.
ACC and ESPN guarantee three Friday football games each season over the 15-year life of the new pact. One game each will be played annually at BC and Syracuse and the third will become a fixture on the day following Thanksgiving. Presumably Yankees don’t worry as much about eclipsing Friday Night Lights as their Southern counterparts.
-- Ivan Maisel touches on a topic that I'm completely ignoring for its utter ridiculousness: banning college football.
-- And Maisel has a very interesting scoop on the ACC's punishment of North Carolina:
The Atlantic Coast Conference membership last month came up one vote short of fining North Carolina $100,000 for the NCAA violations committed during the tenure of former coach Butch Davis.
Instead, the league's Infractions and Penalties Committee issued a public reprimand of the university.
The vote of 7-4 in favor of the fine (North Carolina did not vote) fell one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to approve the penalty, according to two sources within the league. However, the failed vote indicates that a significant majority of North Carolina's fellow members took a dimmer view of the school's behavior than the issuing of a reprimand would indicate.
-- And realignment guru Chip Brown, from Rivals site Orangebloods.com, has some insights on the Big 12's possible expansion plans in this article.
For weeks and months, I had been told the Big 12 was good with 10 schools. Nine conference football games. Home-and-home in basketball league games. Good. No need for a Big 12 championship football game because it would only risk knocking a possible undefeated or one-loss team out of a national title shot with an upset.
But last week I talked to some people who said, "Well, if it's the right two." And that was different from what I had heard before.
I was also told that studies had been done looking at what value might be added if any of the original members of the Big East (Louisville, Cincinnati, etc.) would bring to the Big 12, and that report did not come back favorably, sources said.
That leaves some interesting candidates who could probably benefit from having the ability to launch their own network. The most likely to benefit from such an opportunity would be Notre Dame and Florida State.
The Big 12 has repeatedly indicated to Notre Dame it could bring its non-football sports to the Big 12 and keep football as independent, allowing the Irish to keep their football contract with NBC while launching a Tier 3 network.
So far, Notre Dame has indicated it's just fine. We'll see if Florida State does the same.
LW
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